How to Prepare for Memory Championship

One of the events common to many of the world memory championship competitions is memorizing 1 or more randomly shuffled deck of cards. This is a particularly difficult task. Just in case you’d like to learn how to prepare for memory championship card events, this article by Tim Ferris in the Huffington Post gives you one technique. You’ll need a few hours, but it just might be worth it for the “wow” factor.

How to Prepare for Memory Championship

Learn how to prepare for memory competition using this one technique for memorizing randomly shuffled decks of cards

Step One: Learning the Cards

First, you convert 52 cards into 52 celebrities.

The mind ignores the mundane and remembers the unusual, whether people (e.g., Lady Gaga) or a sudden motion in the under- brush. The more unusual, the more the brain forms a bookmark for recall.

To make recalling 52 celebrities easier, each suit corresponds to a personality type and each card ( jack, 10, ace, etc.) corresponds to a profession (or category). This means that when you look at a given card, you’ll have two cues to help you remember the celebrity.

The Suits (think: personalities):

Diamonds — rich people
Hearts — people you love
Clubs — tough or crazy people
Spades — amusing or absurd people

The Cards (think: professions):

All even numbers are female and all odd numbers are male, and they’re paired up. You can just remember that, for instance, 9s are powerful men, and the 10s are therefore powerful women. The 5s are controversial males, so 6s are controversial females, etc.

If you decide that you like this technique for to how to prepare for memory championship and are going to give it a try (just for the fun of it, not necessarily for the competition), come back and tell us in the comment section how you did. We look forward to hearing from you.